Bill Loguidice's blog

It’s with great pleasure that I announce the imminent launch of the new Armchair Arcade Website, which will happen automatically on Friday, October 24, 2014. This is our third (and hopefully final) major site redesign since our inception in 2003. While the two previous incarnations of the Armchair Arcade Website (including this one) will still remain accessible, this new site is where all new content will exclusively reside going forward.

While your existing RSS feeds and other pointers will still continue to work, there will be no new content from this site. Luckily, the new Website makes it easy to establish the connections of your choice.

Despite originally planning for a more flashy Website, the whole point of Armchair Arcade was always to make the creation and development of new content easy for the team, with minimal administrative hassle. Unfortunately, the previous sites - including this one - never achieved that goal. After more than a decade, this new site finally does, and, as such, we’ve kept extraneous “flash” to a minimum. Of course, we do plan on adding features over time, but it will never again be at the expense of easily creating new content. Further, it will be far easier for our fans to create a new user account and comment on any of our content, making Armchair Arcade more interactive than ever.

This new site represents a new era for Armchair Arcade and one that I’m proud to be a part of. Hopefully you feel the same. So once again, welcome, and once the new site is live, be sure to subscribe to our updates via the email form on our Website, your RSS reader of choice, or the various social networks where we have a presence. As always, we’ll leave the light on for you.

The program for Classic Gaming Expo (CGE), which runs from September 12 – 14 at the Riviera Hotel and Casino right on the Las Vegas Strip, is now being previewed here. As indicated in the program, our film, Gameplay: The Story of the Videogame Revolution, will be shown on Friday, September 12, 10PM, Panel Room B, as part of a special advance sneak preview. If you’re able to make it, be sure to drop us a line and let us know what you think. Enjoy!

As I sidled up to the sofa for yet another hour of Sony's MLB 14: The Show for the PlayStation 4 yesterday, it dawned on me how, despite the obvious sports trappings, it really is the ultimate action Role-playing Game (RPG), setting a standard that the more typical fantasy-themed games in the genre would do well to emulate. Now, don't get me wrong, for the most part, MLB 14 is a standard sports videogame, one obviously themed to the well worn game of professional baseball. However, it does have among its cavalcade of modes, Road to the Show, which is as much of an RPG as any RPG that ever RPG'd (or something like that).

Road to the Show lets you create a baseball player from scratch. You have a pool of stats to distribute over a wide range of abilities (hitting, throwing, running, fielding, etc.), determine physical characteristics, design the player's features, determine preferred position, decide on the player's age, etc. In short, you can mould exactly the type of character you want to play, albeit only a male one (you can thank Major League Baseball for that particular restriction), right down to the name, which can even be spoken by the announcer who calls the games if you choose something common enough (my first name was there, "Bill," but not my last, so I chose a nickname of "Train," as in, "freight train - look out!," for my last name (don't judge me!)). (Read more)

AtariProtos.com has excellent coverage of the ultimately unreleased 1983/84 Garfield game for the Atari 2600 that the comic header clearly mimics. While there is some speculation in the AtariAge thread about how Jim Davis "re-discovered" the 8-bit art, it seems to me that, based on the AtariProtos.com piece, in granting permission to release the ROM image, he was certainly aware of its existence, and relatively recently at that. Considering the near exact replication, it's likely he was working off of screenshots in his possession rather than a random Web search, and did so quite deliberately. Regardless of whether or not you're a fan of Garfield, if you're into videogames, it's hard to deny it's a cool move.

AtGames has authorized the exclusive release of the game list for the 2014 edition of the ColecoVision Flashback, which hits major US retailers like Toys''R''Us, Dollar General, and Sam's Club in October.

The 60 game list that appears on the ColecoVision Flashback is as follows:
(Read more)

AtGames has authorized the exclusive release of the game list for the 2014 edition of the Intellivision Flashback, which hits major US retailers like Toys''R''Us, Dollar General, and Sam's Club in October.

The 60 game list that appears on the Intellivision Flashback is as follows:
(Read more)

AtGames has authorized the exclusive release of the game lists for the 2014 editions of the Sega Genesis Classic Game Console (which accepts cartridges) and Sega Genesis Ultimate Portable Game Player (which accepts an SD card), each of which hits major US retailers like Toys''R''Us in October.

The 80 game list that appears on both the Sega Genesis Classic Game Console and Sega Genesis Ultimate Portable Game Player is as follows:
(Read more)

Gravitas Ventures has acquired the worldwide distribution rights to our documentary film, Gameplay: The Story of the Videogame Revolution. Gravitas specializes in the aggregation of entertainment content by connecting independent filmmakers, producers, and distribution companies with leading cable, satellite, telco, and online distribution partners. In the last five years, Gravitas has released more than 2,000 films on Video on Demand (VOD). Through its relationships with studios and VOD operators, Gravitas can distribute a film into over 100 million North American and one billion worldwide homes. At present, Gravitas is working with the creators of Gameplay to translate the film into more than half a dozen additional languages. Additional details to follow.